


Be So Glad

by sisabet



Category: Farscape
Genre: F/M, Fanvids, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-24
Updated: 2006-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:03:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisabet/pseuds/sisabet





	Be So Glad

Originally published to LJ 9-24-06

 _ **New Vid!! Farscape!!! VVC 2006 Premiere!**_  
This is my Vividcon 2006 Premieres Vid: thanks as always to renenet and luminosity for beta duties and also Eunice, SDWolfpup and Zen for pulling for this to be finished.

Be So Glad  
Fandom: Farscape  
Songs by: Ed Lewis and group AND North Mississippi Allstars  
Available in 28 mb zipped Xvid. Let me know if more sizes, formats are needed.  
Right Click (or not): [here](http://www.sisabet.com/farscape/BeSoGladWeb.zip)  
 _Some prisons you take with you_.

Feedback, Comments, Recs, Reviews, Remixes and Chocolate are always welcome here.

Aaaannnd now - because [](http://cesperanza.livejournal.com/profile)[**cesperanza**](http://cesperanza.livejournal.com/) asked (and boy howdy, she should regret that now) I give you the Incredibly Long and Possibly Detailed only For ME! Vidder's notes for this vid (in that they are the notes that I just now typed up sitting here and remembering what I was trying to do. Cause I don't take many notes while vidding. It just...well there is prep. Hell yeah, there is prep. But not so many notes. My beta takes notes. I think. She can answer that).

Cutting for length without end 

Gah - okay so here is the deal: This is a North Mississippi Allstar song and as such - it is either related to, or directly descended from, or actually consisting of Some Pretty Major Players (still alive and recently or not so recently deceased) and just tracing who is who is who is who can be a post all by itself. "Be So Glad" is further complicated because besides the regular members of NMA (Luther and Cody Dickinson, Chris Chew and Duwayne Burnside as of this song) the guest vocalists are Otha Turner (and OMG I have things to say but they have to wait until MY OTHER NMA Farscape vid is done cause OMG, but yeah) and Cody Burnside (grandson of RL and nephew of Duwayne). And I could stop now and explain about R.L. Burnside and Jim Dickinson except that would make me really sad and you folks have google. So I stop.

Okay, wait - I stop and I backtrack. In 1959 this dude named Alan Lomax (not to be confused with the Lorax...not that I do that) traveled to Parchman Farm and made a bunch of recordings. Wait, I need to back track some more and explain who Lomax was...oh, hell - you people are probably why *I* know about Lomax so I'll just leave the explanation of who he was and how he got there up to you and your diety/search engine of choice. Parchman Farm is the state penitentiary of Mississippi and to say that life there was harsh would be an understatement of both the words "life" and "harsh." In fact - it would not be fit for human habituation until 1972 (and even then it is debatable).

Lomax recorded a prison work chant - out in the fields, led by Ed Lewis. The refrain was "I'll be so glad/ when the sun goes down" and you can hear the pickaxes hit as the song keeps the pace going. The song's intent is incredibly moving and telling -- the prisoners don't ask for freedom and they don't even speak of dreaming of freedom. Instead they yearn for respite. For rest. I'll be so glad when the sun goes down. Yeah, sure, sometimes that means death, but for a large portion of the inmates at Parchman, that was a very fair potential assumption of the end of their sentence. Not a nice place, at all. At least after you die you get to rest. Maybe.

Fast forward to 2003 and North Mississippi Allstars drafts Turner and Cody Burnside (this is the song with TWO CODYS!! I am delighted) to help and their cover of this song was one of the strongest points on "Polaris" and they dedicate it to an imprisoned Kimbrough. Sniff. These guys. My heart.

Finally, on to my vid - so I am listening to this song a lot and I love it and I know what it is about but I don't have any fannish interpretation cause it seems so very self-contained and specific. Also, Cody Burnside is getting on my nerves - not all the time - sometimes I just love him and sometimes I think he is a trip and sometimes I wanna just pinch his cheeks. Sometimes, however, he *bugs* me. I still love him, it is just I harbor the love with a mild annoyance. This made me think of Stark.

Normally, this would not result in a vid, however, you have John Crichton's Frustrated Southern Boyness and I love that so much because sometimes John is the only Fannish Character I Love that can handle so much of the music of my heart (Black Crowes I am looking at you). So as soon as I made the association with Stark I also connected to John and it was like a flash that this song fit - they were both imprisoned! OMG!

But wait! There's more!

Because John and Stark escape together, right? But that was only from their physical prisons - both of them have something that they don't quite want in their heads - something that was corrupted by Scorpius. Stark has the burden of ushering other souls across the dead zone or something (but I don't think that is specific to Bennick Slaves - I think Stark got fucked with to begin with and then Scorpius fucked with him some more cause that boy? Ain't right) with his painful glowiness that he has to clamp down behind an iron mask in order to even try to control it. Crichton has...well, the Ancient Race that looks Like Daddy put the wormhole knowledge in his head and Scorpius put in a chip and really -- these guys can escape all they want from the actual mortar and block prison they were in, but they are NEVER getting away from what is locking up their minds.

And there is the vid. Intro the original song and the pickaxes and you get to see both of the characters that will be central in the vid: John and then his echo, Stark.

The NMA version starts and I wanted to take strong advantage of the percussion and show John at the very end of the series - creating the wormhole weapon and then being trapped in this between world with the 2001 imagery and the aloneness and the coma. Cause I like comas. They don't always vid well, so you can only hope that if your main character does go catatonic, there will be interesting camera work around him (*hugs Farscape and John's drool lines*)

I'm still in 16:9 aspect ratio, btw, here. I struggled with this vid because the first 3 seasons of Farscape are 4:3 and the final season and mini are 16:9. Inconsistent bastards. I tried to make it nondistracting but as soon as the intro of the song is over and we go into the first verse the vid is then fullscreen. The distraction I went with was shiny fiery wormholes! and the camera was moving in on Catatonic!Crichton and into the wormhole and I just hoped the eye would follow and not think about the letterboxing going away.

But here is the first verse - and it is Crichton and Stark meeting in jail! "My side, your side, my side, your side!" and Scorpius basically Aurora Chairing the hell outta both. They are both just starting to realize the helplessness of their situation and yet they have no idea. There are those sweet cuddley moments (prison!cuddles) where there is a rainbow around their shoulder, ain't gonna rain on them. Bless them.

And then those crazy bastards break outta jail. Bless them.

 _I ain't all that sleepy but, I wanna lie down_

I should mention something here: initially Burnside's speed rapping over the chorus made me think of Stark because it is so unstable and frenetic and kind of builds until he just breaks out of the song (more on that later) but in constructing this vid, I realized that at certain points in canon the ONLY person who can possibly out-crazy Stark, is John. And when John out-crazys Stark he does so IN BIG HUGE WAYS. So, the two men and the disparate voices become really intwined for me through out much of the song in that they echo off each other. At least until Stark gets really really pissed off. More on that later.

Anyway - back to the second verse. The guys are tired. They aren't sleepy - but they long for rest. Here is where I tried to bring in Aeryn and Zhaan (and Cricton's mother but I just wanted to juxtapose her with Zhaan cause he gets everything so warped and confused. Bless him). When you are in prison, you are by definition, separated from your loved ones and family on the outside. These guys? Escaped Scorpius in the first verse but won't ever be free of his influence cause they carry it with them - in their heads. There is no way they can freely accept the comfort Zhaan and Aeryn offer, not without horrible consequences to one or the other.

Which leads us to:

 _  
O, when the moon  
Refuse to shine_

John killed Aeryn!!! YOU BASTARD!

 _Rain (or ring or reign) like silver  
Shine like Gold_

Zhaan loves John! She loves Aeryn. She is love! HOW FREAKING COOL IS IT THAT I GET A SONG THAT ALLOWS ME TO DO THIS??? YAY!

 _O, when the moon (shine like gold)  
Refuse to shine_

Stark loves Zhaan. Zhaan is DYING BECAUSE OF AERYN LIVING!!! OMG THE PAIN!! OMG THE TORTURE!!! OMG THE BLUE AND GOLD PALETTE!!!

So, here we get the eventual and inevitable Stark Breakdown. He loved and was comforted by Zhaan. She left him and died and died and died because of sacrifice and Aeryn and John and she died and died and died. And died. And left him. And died.

I loved that in "John Quixote" we finally get to see the toll of losing Zhaan, and then having to watch my (eventual) Dead Blue John and Aeryn together, and then having to be the death messanger, memory holder and crosserover of My Dead Blue John - we get to see that it *really* fucked Stark up, somewhere. At least it fucked him up more and then we get this reversal Stark - this strange virtual reality, my side your side is NOT ENOUGH, raw nerve of GRIEF and pain Stark. Who also brings us Max Headroom as everyone (cause can you IMAGINE having to sort through and make sense of My Dead Blue John's memories? Me neither).

So in the song - Cody Burnside starts just losing it - the band takes a break and lets him rant and in my vid Stark has his HUGE PAINFUL FLOW OF THE PAINFUL PAIN. Because Zhaan DIED. And died. Also - I used Zhaan's blinky death to try to smoothly go from 4:3 to 16:9 (the vid will stay 16:9 from this point on).

I mean all of this? Horribly unfair to Stark. Sure it sucks to be John - but Stark cannot ever catch a break. So I get him losing it here. The John Quixote Virtual Stark is reversed visually from normal Stark - I liked the idea of Stark becoming reverse upon himself in this section of the vid. Before, even when John was at his Craziest-Aeryn-Killing-Self, Stark was always very FOCUSED on him, on making sure John is okay (it is what he and Zhaan have in common). Here there is a shift - a fundamental cry in the unfairness ( _in it to win_ ) - and Stark almost becomes an enemy - a malignant presence.

He is still entirely focused on John and so, since I decided that John Quixote made it canon that not only did Stark have all of My Dead Blue John's memories, he shared them with Not!Dead!Yet!John and here he is putting together the leaps John will have to make - what John will have to decide to do ( _it will be his home_ ) and how, yeah - eventually the universe will make right all the Unrealized Realities and eventually All the Johns will become one - and all that requires is a leap of faith. And Stark is good at that kind of shit. He and Crichton are bound and he is able to make a sort of peace with that. They are the same but he isn't himself and neither is Crichton. They are prisoners. Which is kind of the point of the vid.

I was also trying to tie together the various Crichtons in this section, with help from Stark. One of my favorite things in the mini was Einstein scarring Crichton in the exact same spot as the scar that differentiated My Dead Blue John from Not!Dead!Yet!John, indicating, at least to me, that eventually the ripples will even out into the surface and John will come full circle into himself. You didn't have to get that from the vid, though. It was just something fun that I used to keep me on track. I imagined Stark was tracking the progression, because I think he would. That freak. Bless him. And if he was tracking it - that would be one of the vehicles he can use to make peace with Crichton and with himself and with their fates. Not that it will make him any less crazy. Hell, no.

So, now we are back into the familiar structure of the song and I had better be wrapping things up.

 _Well, I made you a living when I was free_

Well, now Crichton is just plain pissed. Stark is much more reticent in this section and has to be held down and forced to participate by John because, well... I don't think Stark sees any other life for himself. I don't think Stark wants anything more than the sun to go down. He'd like to rest but he can't even imagine Freedom. Poor Stark. He has never seen the Shawshank Redemption.

 _in a world of trouble you won't write to me_

Scorpius did this to both - Scorpius is the warden, their minds are the prisons and the parole board was all assassinated. Crichton and Stark are gonna have to free themselves.

 _but I be so glad when the sun goes down_

The music hesitates here, gets quiet and the percussive picks up and HERE is where they realize how to do it. And it is JOHN who makes the connection but it was Stark who put the pieces together in "John Quixote" - and I kind of am in love with the Einstein bit here where he appears to Cricton cause I am splicing together stuff from Unrealized Realities and the mini and it _worked so well YAY!!_

Also? In prison, sometimes all you have are warm cuddley moments with your cell mate. That is all.

Okay - so I've worked on this vid for a year. Seriously - either actively or just thinking about it - but there was a full draft that I brought to VVC 2005 for some beta commments. I had to go to the library and do *research* for this vid. I made [](http://renenet.livejournal.com/profile)[**renenet**](http://renenet.livejournal.com/) go to the SUBURBS without a CAR and track down the original Lomax recording so I could sample it as vid bookends. I still couldn't get the ending to work. Stark is free and he leaves his mask with John but John is still in a coma and that was what I had. And there was that obnoxious Cody going "Now what?" which made [](http://sockkpuppett.livejournal.com/profile)[**sockkpuppett**](http://sockkpuppett.livejournal.com/) laugh and me cry. Also? Lum forbid me from ending the vid with Crichton in a coma. Not so much forbid as she expressed serious doubts that I would want to make *that* vid.

So, um - I went with the baby. Cause Stark is free now and can pursue whatever it is he needs to go after. But Crichton is free and he can FINALLY have what he has always wanted/wanted to go back to: his family. And that is one cute baby. Lookit the snuggles.

This damned baby was also the most nerve-wracking thing I've ever put in a vid. Ever. I swear, I've imagined every single response I could ever think of in regards to the baby because DEAR GOD, there is a baby in my vid. A snuggley baby. ACK. AWWWW. And then we went to the premieres show and the people that could *see* the baby (the baby was not visible to the people in the back. *I* couldnt even see my own damned baby. Wait, that came out wrong) seemed to be okay with the baby and I didn't know what to do with all that nervous baby energy. I think that is why we have this humongous rambling post. Baby issues.


End file.
